Saturday, December 14, 2013

REVIEW 235: WHAT THE FISH

Release date:

December 13, 2013

Director:

Gurmmeet Singh

Cast:

Language:

Dimple
Kapadia, Anand Tiwari, Manu Rishi, Manjot Singh

Hindi

What The Fish is insubstantial timepass.
The concept is unusual, but the execution is wanting. It’s not that the film is
bad (it’s not) but that it’s not particularly memorable. This is the story of a
grouchy Vasant Kunj Aunty, Sudha Mishra, who leaves her home in the care of her
niece’s fiancé Sumit only to return a month later to discover a chudail in the bathroom but everything
else perfectly in place including things that weren’t there before. She had
specific instructions for Sumit: don’t use my toilet, don’t sleep in my
bedroom, feed the fish, water the money plant, don’t have any guests over. He,
of course, instead throws a party for a friend right after her departure and
then lends the house to another friend who is desperate to bed his runaway
girlfriend. That friend opens the doors to another, who further passes on the
keys to someone else and so the baton-changing saga continues. What exactly happened
between the time Sudha Mishra entrusted her bungalow to Sumit and the day of
her return? The events are recounted to us going back and forth between
flashbacks to occurrences of the previous month and the present day, with Sudha
Aunty playing Chinese whisper with herself, her encounter with the chudail becoming more exaggerated each
time she narrates the experience to someone.

The storyline is pregnant with promise. Considering
that the house was trashed by Sumit’s party guests, how come it was so neat
when Sudha Aunty got back? Has the fish become fat? How come the knick-knacks
taken away by her ex-husband are now neatly stacked in their old places in the
drawing room? Has a spirit taken up residence there? This is a story that could
have been fun if the potential of its concept had been fully tapped. What it
needed was cleverer writing, snappier dialogues in particular, pacier editing
and more inspired acting. No actor is better though than the written material at
hand; sadly for the ensemble cast including some with an interesting track
record, the screenplay of What The Fish fails
to go beyond the minimum laughs that the basic plot was bound to deliver.

And so a National Award-winning actress like
Dimple Kapadia looks pretty but is reduced here to a skeletal caricature of a
rude elderly relative with no depth of characterisation or performance; Manu
Rishi who was fantastic as Anni in Phas
Gaye Re Obama is enjoyable as the slimy property dealer who wants to seduce
his friend’s girlfriend, but still a far cry from his hilarious best; and Anand
Tiwari flits in and out of the film, remaining more or less untapped, although
his ability to extract laughs from an audience was evident most recently in Go Goa Gone.

Unremarkable but not entirely avoidable, that’s how
I’d describe this film which needed an unrelenting pace, deliberately
over-the-top acting, sturdier characters and less minutes of running time to rev
it up. What’s refreshing about it is that it doesn’t stereotype any of the
communities represented here, whether it’s the Haryanvis or the family from the
North East. The first half is far better than the second, and there are patches
of entertainment to be had while watching it. The best I can say about What The Fish is that a single viewing
didn’t feel like a complete waste of time, but I’d certainly not make the
effort to watch it again.

One question though: when the fish will this
fishing film industry give a fishing good actress like Dimple a more solid role
in a fishing solid film?!

About Me

Anna MM Vetticad is an award-winning journalist, journalism teacher and author of the critically acclaimed bestseller The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, an overview of the Hindi film industry presented through an account of a year in which she watched every single Bollywood film released in India’s National Capital Region. A journalist since 1994, she has worked with India Today, The Indian Express and Headlines Today. At HT she hosted her own interview show Star Trek which drew all India’s eminent entertainment personalities. While Anna has spent most of her career as a behind-the-scenes editorial person, she has also reported on most major Indian entertainment and lifestyle events and several international ones including Cannes and the Oscars, in addition to being the film critic for Headlines Today. She is currently reporting and writing for multiple publications on cinema and social issues with a focus on gender concerns. The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic is available on amazon.com, ebay.in, flipkart.com, ombooksinternational.com, ombooks.com, infibeam.com, homeshop18.com and dialabook.in among other websites, and in stores across India. Twitter: @annavetticad